Something for the weekend...

TB is going to be in transit for most of the weekend driving back from France, so he will be rather quiet. In the meantime here are some of the long awaited pictures from the

Young America's Foundation

conference in DC a few weeks back. Seems Tory Bear has a whole legion of new fans, including Kate Obenshain of Fox News fame...

American girlies, if you fancy coming to the

Young Britons' Foundation

conference in October then you should probably take a look at

this

.

Get writing those essays if you want to see see the bear again...

Brown and Out

When it comes to this...

Dear Prime Minister,

The decision by the Scottish Justice Secretary to release Mr al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds has been widely condemned, including by President Obama.

As I said yesterday, I believe that the decision to release Megrahi was wrong. He was convicted of murdering 270 people, and I do not believe he deserved to be released on compassionate grounds, or returned to Libya.

The scenes of him receiving a rapturous welcome at Tripoli airport on his return will have distressed many people. I note that Colonel Gaddafi’s son has now publicly thanked not just the Scottish authorities but the British Government for its stance, raising questions about the British Government’s role

You have not commented on the decision since it was announced yesterday. This morning your Foreign Secretary refused several requests to say what he thought of the Scottish Justice Secretary’s decision.

The fact that the decision to release was taken by the Scottish Justice Secretary does not preclude you, as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from now expressing your opinion on a subject that is of great public concern, and which affects Britain’s international reputation and our relations with our allies.

It is curious that while others have commented, Britain’s own Prime Minister has not.

I hope you will now take the opportunity to do so.

We are entitled to know what you and your Ministers have said to the Libyan authorities on this matter, and to the Scottish Justice Secretary.

Above all, I believe that the public are entitled to know what you think of the decision to release Megrahi, and whether you consider it was right or wrong.

I hope you will now take the opportunity to make your own view clear.

David Cameron

..you know the Prime Minister is a disgrace.

The grumbling is starting again...

This Observer isn't very happy

with Conservative Future and has some interesting words of encouragement that could be paraphrased with "kick" "up" and "backside":

"Since I joined the party in February, I have had precisely nil contact from Conservative Future. Indeed, had I not been an avid reader of political blogs I would not even have known that the organisation exists.

If the party genuinely wants to engage young people with politics. If it goes to all the bother (and presumably expense) of setting up a youth organisation to achieve just that, then it really should be making sure that everyone can get involved.

Doing that wouldn't be hard. All it means is regular e-mail updates to eligible CF members. It wouldn't cost much and the extra numbers of campaigning young people that might end up on the streets as a result could be huge."

Looking forward to hearing who the new co-options onto the National Exec for the election campaign are. They need to hit the ground running and instill some much needed energy into a exec that has been going close to 18 months now.

Nominations have closed and the selection process is apparently underway. TB has been assured it is completely independent of CCHQ, which fingers crossed means we might get some sound people.

You'll know when he knows.

It's not the doctors that are evil...

Seems

Comrade Blaney

has been taking photoshop tutorials.

Totty Watch: Lady Kitty Spencer Editon

After the rage of the last couple of posts, it's definitely time for some light relief.

Mandrake

reports today that top totty Lady Kitty Spencer, niece of Diana, wants "to write - I was actually thinking about doing political journalism before. I like the idea of being like a Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City, but who writes about serious things."

It's an open secret that TB is a Sex in the City fan, (yes he's seen every episode, whatya gonna do about it!?) There is a serious lack of political lady-bloggers. Where is the blogosphere's political Carrie? Maybe Kitty should fill the gap...

TB would be happy to show her the ropes.

Nationalist Scum.

Fraser Nelson wrote in

today's Speccie

about the growing closeness between the tories and their anti-labour "mercenaries" - the SNP in North Briton. It's a must read, but

developments today

might put a little strain on that relationship. As nice as some of them are for a pint or a bit of banter, the Lockerbie decision reminds us all of what dangerous and deluded fools the Scottish nationalists really are.

What do you expect when you elect what should be no more than a lunatic-fringe pressure group to run a region. The Scottish Executive have embarrassed themselves today. The UK as a whole has been shamed by a jumped up county council. The scumbag terrorist should have been left to rot in pieces, thinking about the hundreds of innocent lives he ended and families he destroyed. Compassion isn't a word he ever used. The shameful political opportunism - honed down to the very last second, with MacAskill timing his speech, just a couple of minutes past the hour in order to guarantee American television coverage, was just so blatent. This wasn't about compassion, it was a cold and cynical calculated political move. The last refuge of the scoundrel indeed.

The SNP may think they have scored a victory here, no doubt Salmond will be troughing a celebratory curry tonight, but in the long run this will come back to bite them in the arse. They have shown to the whole world that they are amateurs, way out of their depth, proving what we had all long suspected. They have set the agenda back years, we have solid proof now that they should not be in a position of power.

Every cloud eh?

Guest Post - Chris Galley

Chris Galley, the Home Office mole arrested along side Damian Green isn't likely to get his DNA off the system anytime soon. Chris was arrested and interrogated like a terror suspect and was held at an RAF base. He is still waiting to get his ipod back...

Shadow Immigration Minister Damian MP last night won his battle to have DNA taken off the Stasi's national database. Mr Green said:

'This is a small but significant victory for freedom, but it is only a first step'

Some of you may know me as the former civil servant who helped Damian Green expose the endemic failings in the immigration system for which I had my DNA taken and incredibly my footprints taken as well. I can honestly say that that although the weft of the Home Office carpet was comfortable I was never tempted to walk around barefoot!

Both our DNA samples and a large amount of our personal property have been stored since last November until the case was thankfully thrown out in April. In a rare victory the police have told Mr Green that he meets the 'exceptional' circumstances whereby a DNA sample can be destroyed. This normally amounts to 500 samples a year out of 850,000 innocent people on the DNA database including many juveniles. According to the Daily Mail the Metropolitan police has only destroyed 31 DNA samples in the last year. Having contacted Helen Wallace of

Genewatch UK

this morning regarding destroying my own DNA sample I was told the chances were basically nil. The only real action I can take is a letter writing campaign against Sir Paul Stephenson's office or go down the legal route which would probably lead to bankruptcy. I would like to know what an exceptional circumstance is so that I can be released from the database along with the other 850,000 people.

I have written to the Metropolitan Police today asking for my DNA to be removed and I don't expect to be treated as an exceptional circumstance neither did Mr Green. He had to endure another lengthy legal fight to remove himself from the tentacles of Big Brother to prove that it is possible. For the disgraced hierarchy at the Metropolitan Police removing Mr Green DNA from the database seems to be an olive branch to him for targeting an innocent man for doing his job and possibly someone who could be their boss come the next election.

I can just imagine the draft being prepared already by one of the police officers who is even too unfit to stand outside parliament: Dear Mr Galley, Due to orders from the former Home Secretary Jackboots you are to be transported to Siberia henceforth....via RAF Uxbridge.

Chris Galley is now the Research Director of the

Sunlight Centre for Open Politics

. You can donate to their private prosecution of Jacqui Smith

here

.

Don't do it Dave...

So

The Sun

is reporting that Dave went out for a night with Hull police and is considering trebling the tax on some drinks in order to curb boozing. Sounds like something straight out of the New Labour paternalistic playbook. He attacked the ‘unbelievably low prices of some alcohol’.

Hmmm. What happened to personal responsibility, that little concept

you spoke of just over a year ago

. It wasn't all nanny state and dictating to people what they should drink then:

"David Cameron declared yesterday that some people who are poor, fat or addicted to alcohol or drugs have only themselves to blame.

He said that society had been too sensitive in failing to judge the behaviour of others as good or bad, right or wrong, and that it was time for him to speak out against “moral neutrality”."

Please continue...

“Of course, circumstances — where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school and the choices your parents make — have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices people make.”

Damn straight.

+++Damian Green DNA Victory+++

The beeb

is reporting that the police have destroyed Damian Green's DNA after his arrest last year. Green said:

"The police have now agreed that they will delete my DNA fingerprint and my police national computer record as I have been requesting ever since I was cleared." and that it was a "small but significant victory for freedom".



Tory MP one, Labour's brave new police state zero.

#freegrantshapps

Apparently Grant Shapps's Twitter account was suspended for "for publicising his own website so much that they thought he was spamming" according to his Chief of Staff. (Grant Shapps has a CoS!?)

Panic not sports fans, apparently he has been in touch with the twowers that be and will be back spamming within the week...

Now this should be amusing...

Mark Oaten's kiss and tell is

out in time

for conference:

Shit title.

TB in Blades of Glory?

A loyal reader

has busted TB's secret Hollywood career. The screenshots never lie - there indeed is Tory Bear with Will Ferrell and friends 43 minutes into Blades of Glory...

Anyone spotted the bear elsewhere?

John Lamont MSP MP?

Long term friend of the bear and general legend John Lamont MSP has

been selected

to fight the highly winnable Borders Westminster seat. John will be a great MP and the 6.5% swing he needs from the Lib Dems is considerably less than the 9.4% he achieved at the last Holyrood elections.

The tory benches need more people like John - best of luck to him.

Every single day...

TB is forced to add another name to the list of people that piss him off. Today it is

John Harris

who spouts shite writes for the Guardian website about music and politics, poorly. This is John Harris:

TB can't quite put his finger on quite why there is such loathing or quite how annoying this chump is, but he has yet to get to an end of one of his pieces without wanting to chew his right paw off, or throw his laptop at the wall. He is a nauseating lefty who is so overwhelmingly self-satisfied that you can actually tell he is sitting there smiling smugly at his choice of words. Take these irritating and sickening Guardian pieces for example:

Interview with George Osborne

- sarcastic and patronising.

Rant about privatisation

-

"Here, anyway, is what increasingly seems to be the future: slick corporate logos flashing from prisons, hospitals, schools, detention centres, defence facilities, police stations and more, and a cut-price society pitched somewhere between Margaret Thatcher and Philip K Dick. Real-life dystopias, let us not forget, tend to arrive by stealth; whatever the political fashion, we need to start talking about all this again – and fast."

-completely deluded and out of his depth, it's dangerous to have such naive people in positions of influence.

Oh and where John shines, and TB means really shines, is

his shite arguments

against giving people the vote and decision making abilities, well that is a little harsh, against open primaries:

"The Totnes model, we hear, is grassroots democracy in action – a cover, surely, for the fact that no national politicians have any convincing plans for the revival of local government. In Westminster, strangulated parliamentary discipline will remain, meaning that even if local mavericks do make the grade, they will still be endlessly cattle-prodded through the lobbies."

They will hardly be the odd "local maverick" if they are all eventually elected this way, and are all subject to primaries every election. My lord John, can you imagine! MPs serving the interests of their constituents, the horror, the horror.

Dear reader, be warned, don't make the mistakes that TB has made in the past. If you see the name John Harris in print, or online, just don't bother reading it, go do something else with your time. You will only end up in a fit of rage that is made even worse by just how punchable this chap looks.

Though what do you expect from someone who clearly thinks Jimmy Osmond is still a fashion icon:

Ugh.

Go Clinton.

TB never thought the day would come when he would say that. However, Mrs Clinton has got one over on the Lord of Darkness today, and that has to be commended.

Liberal Vision's Angela Harbett reports

;

Last year it was dodgy Russians on yachts. This year it has been revealed that the Lord, between sunbathing and posh dinners at chez Rothschilds, did indeed meet with the son of the Libyan leader Colnel Gaddafi, (Saif al-Islam Gaddafi). Just days later meeting, hey presto, reports appear that the Libyan bomber may be released.
A link ? Noooo! Lord Mandelson’s spokesman said that whilst a meeting did take place subsequent reports of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi’s possible release from jail were “entirely coincidental“.

Just HOW stupid do they thing we are (er well pretty stupid now you ask! he’s shown that time and again).

But wait. Lord Mandelson may have met his match. Following the announcement of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi’s possible release, I have been told, and indeed it has been reported that, Hilary Clinton waded in. I do not know what precisely was said unfortnunately, but “over” and “our dead body” was almost certainly the sentiment, if not the actual words used.

So whilst Mr Mandelson may indeed be a highly effective dick-swinger, it would appear that Mrs Clinton has an even larger and more influential one - and with considerable longer reach. Who would have thought that anyone would have ever written a post about MRS Clintons dick-swinging?

Too true, seems Mrs Clinton is far more careful where she swings. Liberal Vision fails to pick up on the other Corfu dinner partner who has got what he wanted though. As TB reported the other day, it's not what you know with Mandy, it's who you know.

The stench of corruption is never far from Foy.

#LabourNotUsingNHS

Tory Politico

got in touch with TB the other day to ask him for a quote for his new blog banner, to which he replied - "Shrewd and to the point, TB is often tempted to nick most of Politico's stories."

Here

is the perfect example:

Good find.

Tim Montgomerie

has been starting the

#LabourNotUsingNHS

hashtag today on the back of Brown's hundreds of pounds of private dental care. We can add hypocrite as well as trougher to the words to describe Ann Keen

TB can think of worse.

She's no Derek Draper...

...but this could still be amusing.

In what is looking more and more likely to be her last few months in Parliament, Kerry McCarthy the MP for Bristol East has been given the poisoned chalice of

coordinating the Labour Party's online

and new media efforts. Doesn't this all sound a little too familiar? Haven't Labour learnt that these sort of things backfire when too much central control is put on them.

The most hysterical line that McCarthy has come out with so far was her

first shot

at the right-wing blogosphere:

"I think this is a real contrast with what the Tories are doing in the area of new media – they seem to be doing everything centrally..."

Is she mental? Here we have a senior Party member - a whip FFS, appointed by the General Election coordinator, announcing her role on a website set up at the behest of Labour HQ, paid for by the Party's biggest donor Unite, and she has the blatant audacity to suggest that the Tories are doing things from the centre?

It took years for bloggers to even get a press release out of CCHQ and yet Labour bloggers are invited for breakfast at Victoria Street and McCarthy bleats on about how she is going to bring the young bloggers on board - make sure they walk the bloody line more like.

Draper was an idiot for very different reasons, but McCarthy's Conservative opponent in Bristol

Adeela Shafi

must surely be laughing at this news today.

It's not like Labour have the best track record when it comes to these things now is it.

Alex Salmond on Braveheart...

Since moving from Edinburgh TB still likes to keep an eye on the north, especially its growing blogosphere. This post from the ever wonderful

Scottish Unionist

made TB chuckle:

Guardian

: “Braveheart gave full rein to a toxic Anglophobia”

American Spectator

: “an anti-English diatribe from its opening”

Independent

: “has been linked to a rise in anti-English prejudice”

Economist

: “xenophobic and historically preposterous”

Guardian

: “seemingly intended as a piece of anti-English propaganda”

Sunday Times

: “The political effects are truly pernicious. It’s a xenophobic film.”

Alex Salmond

: “That film had a profound effect. Things politically were already on the move, but it certainly accelerated change. There aren’t many films which are truly important, but this is one.”

Come on then ye "cybernats" defend that one.

Anti-grass roots.

There are a couple of interesting polls on PoliticsHome today. Firstly it seems that the people agree with George Osborne that Labour are

not a progressive party

and it's them who are desperately clinging to a broken past, and secondly an interesting poll about

legalising drugs

:

TB is slightly disheartened to see that the old fuddy-duddy authoritarian Mail-esque tories have dragged the budding libertarian wing of the party down. TB finds it hard to believe that there are proportionally more Labour voters who want to relax Britain's extreme drug laws, but then again it shows just how out of touch the Labour leadership is with their members. Frankly TB doesn't give a flying fuck what you smoke, inject, snort or drink, it's your choice and your responsibility to pick up the pieces. He has some hope that the next generation coming up the party ranks are noticeably more libertarian - those currently in charge of Conservative Future certainly are, but then again the age old saying will probably come in to play.

A conservative is a libertarian with daughters.

Sounds like a plan...

TB woke up this morning convinced he had that swiiine... a swim and a couple of bellinis later and it turns out it was just a mild case of wine flu.

TB thinks this is how everyone should spend their Sunday afternoon.